Edible plants, mosses and ferns
by Barbara Sherriff, 21 March 2015.
Diana Rosburgh and Suzan Roos led nineteen of us on a gentle walk along the forest trails at the rear of the Recreational Complex. They not only identified many plants, they also explained which ones were edible and which would make us very sick. Among the plants that they described were trailing blackberry, which have separate male and female plants, explaining why some patches have no fruits.
The berries of salal, oregon grape, salmonberry, red huckleberry and evergreen black huckleberry are all great to eat or make into jam but not twin berry or red elderberry. We found edible fiddle heads of the lady fern but were warned off those of bracken, spiny wood or sword fern.
Suzan made us tasty tea from Douglas fir fronds and right at the end of the walk we found edible winter chanterelle mushrooms also known as yellow foot.
